A Case of Two Cities

the committee imprinted underneath the statement but also the signature of Comrade Zhao. It was not just a gesture, it could serve like the imperial sword in ancient history: execute before reporting to the emperor.
     
    He started studying the file on Xing. Secret surveillance of Xing must have been going on for a long time. Some of the reports were quite detailed, covering the length of several months. Chen had to get a general picture before making a move.
     
    He took only one short break. Around nine-thirty, he went out to a hawking street-corner peddler and bought a small bag of fried buns with minced pork and shrimp stuffing. The hot buns tasted delicious, and he devoured them one by one over the dossier. As he was picking up the last bun, he got a call from Detective Yu.
     
    “You’re not coming to the bureau today, boss?”
     
    “No. What’s up?”
     
    “You have a special assignment, I guess?”
     
    “Yes. Did Party Secretary Li tell you anything?”
     
    “No. How about meeting you at your place around noon?”
     
    “Great. Come for lunch.”
     
    “Don’t worry about lunch.” Yu added, “Go on with your work. See you soon.”
     
    Yu didn’t explain the occasion for his visit. The timing concerned the chief inspector. He wasn’t supposed to talk about his new work with any of his colleagues. But for Yu, his longtime partner and friend, also the one in practical charge of the special case squad, he had to make an exception.
     
    So the last bun was left there untouched, stuck to the paper, cold, greasy, flaccid, and dispirited. It was almost like his changed mood, as he went on reading the file about Xing.
     
    In the early eighties, Xing had served as the Party Secretary of Huayuan County, Fujian Province. It was then a backward agricultural area consisting of four or five poor People’s Communes. For the year-long labor, farmers there made less than a hundred yuan. Xing got caught up in the early waves of the economic reform, setting up several commune factories. Those nonstate business entities enjoyed tax breaks as well as other competitive edges in the new market. Their success soon changed the local economic landscape. Xing became a national model Party cadre in “leading the people on the way to wealth and prosperity.” Instead of accepting promotions, he insisted on working as the number-one boss in the county.
     
    As the reform gained further momentum, those companies became private—his companies. His business rocketed up, reaching out into large cities. Like many other upstarts, Xing could not help showing off. If “it is glorious to get rich,” as Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, few appeared more magnificent than Xing. He paraded through Fuzhou in a bulletproof Red Flag allegedly manufactured for Chairman Mao. For his family, he built mansions after the fashion of the Grand View Garden. In a visit to his elementary school, he handed a bunch of hundred-yuan bills to a poor old janitor, like a modern-day Robin Hood. Eventually, his excesses caught the attention of some people in Beijing.
     
    Suspicious things were noticed about his business practice. Because of the market competition, a number of his companies suffered serious losses instead of making profits, but he launched into one new grandiose project after another and went on squandering as if there were gold mountains and silver mines in his backyard. The Beijing authorities had been cautious at first. Xing being a much-touted model Party cadre of the reform, no one wanted to “damage a whole pot of soup with one drop of rat dung.” A special investigation team was sent to Fujian, and the initial discoveries were shocking. Xing had made his real money through smuggling. It was a gigantic operation that covered an incredible range of goods, including automobiles, oils, petrochemical products, liquors, drugs, and weapons. The operation was run by an elaborate network involving his Party connections at all government levels, from the very top in Beijing to the local cops and customs, with the direct or indirect complicity of hundreds of officials. According to one source, the smuggling operation racked up a billion dollars in revenues—an amount equivalent to the province’s annual gross domestic product. No one had taken advantage of the labyrinthine system in a more skillful and more surprisingly simple way—corruption upon corruption.
     
    In order to “get the green light all the way,” he bribed all